"He seems a very good sort, that fellow of yours," the doctor continued indifferently, and then, with a more eager and confidential manner, "But let me explain where the ordinary temperance people are wrong. First, tell me, haven't you at times quarrelled with friends, because you've become suspicious of them, and have imagined some treacherous and concealed motive in the background?" "I don't know that I've quarrelled much." "Well, perhaps not. But you've felt suspicious of people a good deal. You've wondered whether people were thinking about you. In all sorts of little ways you've had these thoughts constantly. Perhaps if a correspondent who generally signs himself 'yours sincerely' has inadvertently signed 'yours truly' you have worried a good deal and invented all sorts of reasons. If some person of position you know drives past you, and his look or wave of the hand does not appear to be as cordial as usual, don't you invent all kinds of distressing reasons to account for what you imagine?" Lothian nodded. His face was flushed again, his eyes--rather yellow and bloodshot still--were markedly startled, a little apprehensive. "If this man knew so much, a wizard who saw into the secret places of the mind, what more might he not know?" But it was impossible for him to realise the vast knowledge and supreme skill of the pleasant man with the cultured voice who sat on the side of the bed. The fear was perfectly plain to Morton Sims. "May I have a cigarette?" he said, taking his case from his pocket. Lothian became more at ease at once. "Well,"--puff-puff--"these little suspicions are characteristic of the disease. The man who is suffering from it says that these feelings of resistance cannot arise in himself. Therefore, they must be caused by somebody. Who more likely then than by those who are in social contact with him?" "I see that and it's very true. Perhaps truer than you can know!" Lothian said with a rather bitter smile. "But how does all this explain what we were talking about at first. The 'Craving' and all that?"